Apple offering face detection APIs to developers in iOS 5

We reported back in September 2010 that Apple was gearing up to purchase Polar Rose, a Swedish company doing some pretty interesting things with facial recognition-based technologies. Polar Rose is also the company behind the Recognizr app, which detects people on live video. It’s been almost a year, and we’re now getting more of an idea of what Apple has in mind with Polar Rose’s software, and it has to do with the heavily-buzzed-about iOS 5.

Apple’s latest OS X release, Lion, gave us a glimpse of Polar Rose’s facial-recognition technology with new features that offer up some playful effects, like birds that fly around your head or hearts that float above your head. Apple won’t necessarily be adding that feature to the next iPhone, but instead, the company will be opening up Polar Rose’s APIs to iPhone app developers.

Taking a cue from Google in the way that the company opens up so much of its APIs to its community of Android developers, Apple is giving developers creative freedom with the facial-recognition software.

Of course, with any facial recognition software, the question of privacy is always brought up. Judging by the demo video below, Recognizr is extremely fast and accurate at identifying a person in the camera’s view. Recognizr allows you to choose which social networks you want to link your face to. So, if a stranger were to use the Recognizr app on you, they could potentially have access to your Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, or YouTube page. You can also link your name, email, phone number, etc., to your face.

If you’re at a party, using the app to instantly access your friend’s Facebook page would be useful, especially when you both realize that you’re not Facebook friends yet. It saves the hassle of having to look up the name and “friend” the person. However, for most people, the thought of having someone scan your face and have access to your personal information is rather terrifying. Of course, the person would presumably only be able to access the information you provided to the app.

The iPhone app Bump works by having people touch their iPhones to one another to access the other person’s phone number. Recognizr could be used the same way, but instead of having to have two phones, the person could just scan the other person’s face and have all the information they need.

With the iPhone 5 still rumored to be coming in September, it will be interesting to see what kind of facial-recognition apps the developers are able to create by then.

Speak Your Mind

http://twitter.com/SamVIP Sam VIP

I hope technology goes this way.. Its predicted that this feature will be BANNED in Canada :( which isn’t right. If people get to personally control what information they share on the internet, their shouldn’t be problems… and at the end of the day, when people get facebook friend requests, its up to that person to accept or deny.

http://www.facebook.com/dosaryan Abdulhamid Aldosary

very good tool in investigation..
and let’s not forget the cool side of it..
pretty awesome.. i like such technology to be spread..